Google Accelerating Development Of Siri Competitor ‘Majel’, To Be Revealed At Google I/O? [REPORT]

Revealed in late 2011, Siri the personal assistant has become one of iOS’ most recognized features at least on the latest iOS devices. It was updated recently at WWDC 2012, bringing new features such as being able to take queries regarding sports and movies, Facebook integration and support for the new iPad.

Other mobile device manufacturers are working towards their alternative to Siri. Samsung recently introduced S Voice as part of their Galaxy S III smartphone which look and works a lot like Siri. Google has been long-rumored to be working on their Siri competitor codenamed ‘Majel’ and now we’re hearing that the company has accelerated development of their voice-based personal assistant to ready it, perhaps, for the upcoming Google I/O event. Details after the jump!

The news comes from Wall Street Journal which cites people familiar with the matter who claim that, as a result of intensifying competition, Google has “accelerated plans” to launch its own Siri competitor to work on Android-powered smartphones and tablets. The report doesn’t mention anything else.

As we’ve mentioned before, the feature is codenamed ‘Majel’ after the Majel Barret-Roddenberry, famously known for voicing most of the computer interfaces in the Star Trek series. That’s really all the information we have on it at the moment. That and some strong hopes of it being a truly powerful voice assistant.

This voice assistant is expected to be part of the Google Nexus tablet / Android 4.1 Jelly Bean announcement at developer event Google I/O which will start on June 27th in San Francisco. A report regarding its features and availability was published earlier today which you can check out here.

I don’t know about you, but Siri isn’t exactly the most-used feature on my iPhone 4S. A recently conducted poll revealed that majority of people haven’t used it in a over a month and those that have really just use it just to show off the feature to their friends. I sense a similar fate for Majel unless it manages to overcome some of Siri’s limitations such as a lack of awareness, a true personality and lack of customizability.